“How could you say we’re not a genius species?” Francis Ford Coppola asked a sold-out audience at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff on Tuesday night, after a screening of his 2024 sci-fi epic Megalopolis.
Coppola sat onstage musing about the origins of the human species and its achievements.
“Is there any other living creature even in that league — when you think of the things we have done, the art we have created … We can send crafts to photograph Mars.”
He described the crowd as his family — a homo sapiens family: “Everyone here is a member of this genius species.”
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Best known for The Godfather franchise, the 86-year-old director has been on the road, showing Megalopolis in five other U.S. cities.
People gather outside the Texas Theatre during an evening with director Francis Ford Coppola and a screening of his movie “Megalopolis” on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Dallas.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)
The movie centers around savant architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who dreams of building a utopian society in New Rome. The city’s mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), favors pragmatic governance and is opposed to Catilina’s vision.
Upon its release last September, Megalopolis polarized viewers and critics alike with its nonlinear narrative and avoidance of genre. During one scene at the Texas Theatre screening, a live actor broke the fourth wall, emerging onstage to speak with the on-screen Catilina.
Coppola poured roughly $120 million into the project, which earned $14.3 million at the box office, according to IMDb. (“I don’t have any money right now,” he said on Tuesday night. “[I’m] totally broke.”)
Megalopolis, though, did not appear made to draw commercial success.
Director Francis Ford Coppola speaks to the audience after a screening of his movie “Megalopolis” at the Texas Theatre on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Dallas.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)
Coppola framed the film as a call to action.
“What I imagine for you is a future that will be beautiful because you’re entitled to it. You’re capable of making it that way,” Coppola said at the Texas Theatre, during a post-screening seminar titled “How to Change our Future.” “That’s what this film is trying to say.”
“The chance to find out how that’s gonna happen despite all the many obstacles, which of course we all know [exist], is what we’re gonna do tonight,” he continued.
With the flick of a hand, a large whiteboard was brought onstage.
Written on it were 10 things Coppola said humans invented: work, money, politics/government, education, law/penology, caste/war, art, sport, celebration and time (“we didn’t invent time, but nature told us about time,” he clarified).
People take photos of a white board containing themes from his talk after director Francis Ford Coppola addressed the audience after a screening of his movie “Megalopolis” at the Texas Theatre on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Dallas.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)
“They rule our life now and most of them are unpleasant,” he said of the inventions. “My objective here is to make all of them wonderful.”
For the next hour, as he jumped around the list, his view of a utopian future became clearer.
He described policies often promoted by progressive politicians. Free education. No debt. Universal basic income.
Other suggestions were more unorthodox. Allowing 12-year-olds to vote, with the caveat that six of their votes would count as one. Getting rid of time markers like minutes, hours and days, which Coppola described as oppressive constraints.
“Just have time,” he said. “Be beautiful dust.”
In the later Q&A portion of the event, several fans thanked Coppola for his contributions to cinema. He fielded a final question around 11:20 p.m., about two hours after going onstage.
He then sang from Frank Loesser’s 1956 “Big D,” a song whose lyrics he had begun earlier that evening:
Big D, little a, double l, a, s
And that spells Dallas, my darlin’, darlin’ Dallas
Afterward, Coppola folded a piece of paper into an airplane and launched it into the air, watching it land a few feet away from him. The audience — his adopted family for the night — rose to its feet, giving him a standing ovation.
The audience applauds director Francis Ford Coppola after a screening of his movie “Megalopolis” at the Texas Theatre on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Dallas.(Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)